I’m not trying to suggest anything other than “we seem to be ignorant of the racist baggage”.

Both the things I mentioned above (the golliwog and the ash face joke) are things I’ve seen this century. I’m also one of the last generation to grow up with the “Jo, Bessie, Fanny, Dick and Dame Slap” editions of the Faraway Tree books (and remember, there was a full colour illustrated version of that series).

Also, I grew up hearing “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo” with a racial slur in it. I never paid it any mind (although I didn’t make the association until after reading To Kill A Mockingbird).

Normally the answer would be “yes they are [racist]”, but our Australian racial history is quite different. I have actually seen golliwogs for sale in areas near Brisbane."

I'm baffled. I'm not really sure how that differs from, "No, that ethnic slur isn't racist here. After all, I once heard a guy say it."

I'm trying not to come down to hard on you, but what with your weird description of the Stolen Generation and bizarre leaps of logic, maybe you should just acknowledge you're terribly wrong here. I mean, a sentence like,

Quote:

Both the things I mentioned above (the golliwog and the ash face joke) are things I’ve seen this century

isn't really a sign that "Aw, shucks, we just don't know what racism is."

Current Australian society has a weird relationship with its blatantly racist past, there's a whole ton of stuff that gets swept under the rug or under-reported or discarded as 'fake news' or conspiracies and the whole debate over whether Golliwogs are offensive or not is just one example of that.

We still get people dressing up in blackface for costume parties and quite often people will claim that it's not offensive because Australia doesn't have the same history of black and white minstrelsy as the US does. In fact Australia has a pretty long history of minstrelsy from the 1830s until at least the 1950s ({cite}, {cite}) which has been forgotten to the point where people deny it ever happened here. It's simply not talked about so people assume it never happened.

We also had a bunch of right wing media pundits (usually from outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch) claiming that The Stolen Generations never happened or were just a handful of children who were taken from abusive households and rehomed and the situation was a "myth" and "propaganda" which was massively blown out of proportion by "The Left". Here's a pretty good article about the systematic, collaborative movement to cover up one of the worst parts of Australia's racist history. Most of their maneuvers come straight out of the "right wing troll's handbook" and many, many people bought their lies because it's a lot easier to assume the stories were just a conspiracy cooked up by "the Left" rather than face up to the reality.

The n-word also has a long history in Australia. One of our most famous rugby players in the 1910s to 1920s was nicknamed Edwin "Nigger" Brown because of his light complexion (Australians love ironic nicknames) and a local sports stadium was called the "E S 'Nigger' Brown Stand" until 2008 when the name was finally removed due to a public campaign, and even then there was a move to erect a commemorative plaque that kept the name. We also had a whole bunch of household products with the n-word in their title and you could even buy n-word licorice shows bags at the annual royal show up until the 1960s. The radio ads were something else as well (WARNING: audio plays automatically and is very NSFW: link.)

I think this incident from 2009 is fairly emblematic of the whole situation: a local TV variety show called Hey Hey It's Saturday which was big in the 1980s had a short revival and they brought back a blackface act that had previously appeared on the show 20 years ago and was remembered really fondly by the fans of the show. Harry Connick Jnr was appearing as a guest judge and he naturally reacted along the lines of "WTF, this is racist as hell, why the hell did you involve me in this???" and the host of the show was completely unprepared for his reaction and genuinely had ZERO idea anyone would be offended by a blackface song and dance act. They actually had to stop everything and allow Harry Connick Jnr to explain in very simple terms to everyone that blackface is offensive.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEtjaZ8ZuNU
Looking back, the host's dumb ignorance about the implications around blackface is incredibly cringeworthy but it's also genuinely reflective of how most Australians felt about the issue. The 'debate' still comes up at least once a year when some random idiot wears blackface to a costume party and the photos get spread around social media and many many Australians still don't 'get' why it's offensive. (Of course these days quite a few of the people dressing up in blackface are doing it because they know it will offend a lot of people and they're being deliberately offensive and "edgy".)

I knew a girl whose nickname was Nicky... because she was part native American and was the darkest one in her school, until they got some black people in town, so they changed her nickname from n_____r to Nicky...

Current Australian society has a weird relationship with its blatantly racist past, there's a whole ton of stuff that gets swept under the rug or under-reported or discarded as 'fake news' or conspiracies and the whole debate over whether Golliwogs are offensive or not is just one example of that.

This (the entire post this was cut from) was a thoughtful and informative post. I appreciate it. I wonder though, if the biggest issue is that current Australian society has a weird relationship with its blatantly racist present.

The recency of some of these examples means it isn't about the past being quietly swept under the rug. Rather, it's an example of one.of.the.first defenses of longstanding racism: "It's traditional." People are denying that current practices are racist by appealing to tradition. That is not merely a failure to cope with past racism.

This (the entire post this was cut from) was a thoughtful and informative post. I appreciate it. I wonder though, if the biggest issue is that current Australian society has a weird relationship with its blatantly racist present.

The recency of some of these examples means it isn't about the past being quietly swept under the rug. Rather, it's an example of one.of.the.first defenses of longstanding racism: "It's traditional." People are denying that current practices are racist by appealing to tradition. That is not merely a failure to cope with past racism.

I was going to add on a bit at the end about how all those attitudes have carried over to the current blatantly racist practices in this country (especially against refugees who arrive via boats, and Lebanese and sub-Saharan African immigrants). Many of them aren't exactly a continuation of 'traditional' racist practices, they're just similar practices applied to different racial groups. There's way more dogwhistle racism these days, for example, against Muslims for being "un-Australian" and for not having "Australian values" or "assimilating into Australian culture".

But there's also been a few very open attempts to return to 'traditional' racist practices, one of which was the White Australian immigration policy which was ingrained in the Australian constitution from its inception in 1901 and only dismantled between 1949 and 1973. There's been a few politicians openly calling for a return to the policy with one senator even using the phrase "the final solution" in one such speech just a few weeks ago. People were understandably outraged at that and his party leader had the gall to defend the speech, saying that the senator "didn't go to university" and wasn't aware of the historical context behind the phrase. He also stated that the people defending open immigration were "bringing people into this country dedicated to [Jewish people's] destruction and their annihilation" which was one of the more spectacular examples of the old "Well maybe YOU are the real bigot?" gambits I've ever seen. We also get the good old "I don't even see colour, why are you making this about race, maybe YOU are the real racists?" counter argument, and I'm sure it won't surprise any of you to learn that the main media pundit pushing that agenda was charged for breaching the Racial Discrimination Act for several of his published articles.

Katter not only had the gall to defend Anning, but the absence of mind to go with bullshit like this:

Quote:

KATHIYAJANI NITHIYANANTHAN
Senator Anning’s speech to Parliament, which you, Mr Katter, strongly supported, referenced the White Australia policy. But, Senator Katter, your own grandfather, a Lebanese immigrant, would not have been allowed to migrate to Australia with your current beliefs. Please explain.

TONY JONES
Bob Katter.

BOB KATTER
Firstly, my mother told me that you don’t ask anyone about their racial origins or their money income or their religion. And she told me she’d give me a good hiding if I ever did. Now, we’re all Australians, I would hope, in this room. And, you know, whether a person has this religion or that religion is utterly irrelevant. The policy of our party has been very clear. And if you can find anywhere in that speech where he advocated White Australia policy, I’d be very curious to find out where it is. I might even give you a cheque for money.

(The hissy fit starts 15 minutes in, and continues over several other questions)

But there's also been a few very open attempts to return to 'traditional' racist practices, one of which was the White Australian immigration policy which was ingrained in the Australian constitution from its inception in 1901 and only dismantled between 1949 and 1973.

While a return to that policy would be horribly racist, I think the thing that is not being grappled with is that making, displaying, and selling "golliwog" dolls (let alone giving them to children) which in any era are a dehumanizing caricature of people with dark skin, is itself a traditional racist practice. There's nothing "past" about it.

“We used to have special schools for children with behaviour problems,” Mr Latham said on the 4BC radio show. “Not standing is a behavioural problem, so kick her out.”

Jones was also furious about the Brisbane student’s decision.

“What on earth do you do ... other than call the parents in and say ‘listen, these are the rules here, if you don’t like them you do as we say or go somewhere else because we’re not accommodating you”.

I very much doubt that a person who draws for a living can on the one hand be ignorant of earlier racist portrayals of people of colour, and on the other hand be able to nail that style like he did here. Check Mz. Williams lips in the cartoon against these pictures of the Jim Crow era, for example (or this example from Nazi Germany).

Wikipedia lists his birth date as “c. 1960s” and says his childhood was spent in Sydney. That’s not Hicksville, North Western Australia or wherever. It’s possible that the Censored Eleven and Bosko shorts were shown and he might have liked Tintin, but up until this thread I wasn’t actually aware of minstrelsy being performed down here.

However, my mother had no idea who A. O. Neville was. I called him the “Rabbit-Proof Fence guy” and she thought I meant he built one of the actual rabbit-proof fences. (I’m hoping you either know the movie or can infer that he’s the villain).

Also: on Monday someone on Twitter joked that we need an “Abbott-proof Fence” (The Winking Sack Of Useless being the new Minister For Indigenous Affairs).

Whether or not he was exposed to this kind of caricature in his childhood or youth isn't the point. Being a professional artist, he's bound to have studied all kinds of caricature, and he must have come across examples of this kind of racist portrayals of black people. I have, and I'm be no means an artist.

That goes even more, because his cartoon is a rather typical example of it's kind, and I just don't beleive he happend to come up with that all on his own without any model.